Posted on 04/25/2006 4:03:36 PM PDT by familyop
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it would freeze ties with the U.N. nuclear watchdog and speed up its atomic program if it were hit by international sanctions.
"If you impose sanctions, Iran will suspend its relations with the (IAEA) agency," chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told a conference on nuclear issues in Tehran.
"Suspension means we will accelerate our activities."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who like other Western leaders accuses Iran of having a secret program to build nuclear weapons, said in Greece: "I suppose the Iranians can threaten, but they are deepening their own isolation."
The verbal sparring preceded an influential report on Iran that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei is to deliver to the U.N. Security Council on Friday.
Rice drummed up support in Greece and fellow NATO allies Turkey and Bulgaria for tougher action to curb Iran's nuclear work, highlighting its readiness to export nuclear technology.
"It seems logical that we should consider a Chapter 7 resolution under the Security Council's mandate," she said.
A Chapter 7 resolution can open the way to sanctions or even military action, but another resolution would be required in which either step would have to be specified.
The United States, Britain and France favor sanctions unless Iran backs down soon. The council's other veto-holders, Russia and China, oppose punitive measures.
France said it had provisionally scheduled a meeting on May 2 of political directors of the council's five permanent members plus Germany to discuss the next moves on Iran.
Larijani said Iran "cannot be expected to act transparently" in its nuclear activities if it was attacked militarily -- a last-resort option the United States has declined to rule out.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered to share Iran's nuclear technology with other countries, a statement Rice said should be a cause for concern.
Iran says its atomic program is only for power generation.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to transfer the experience, science and technology of its scientists," he said.
NEGATIVE REPORT
The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, predicted ElBaradei would report that Iran had failed to comply with a March 29 Security Council demand that it stop enriching uranium.
Iran said this month it had for the first time purified uranium to the level used to fuel nuclear power stations and that its next goal was industrial-scale production.
In Vienna, a diplomat familiar with IAEA operations said ElBaradei would "lay out the facts", not pass judgment on Iran.
The nuclear watchdog has previously said it cannot confirm that Iran's atomic activities are purely civilian, but that it has found no hard proof of a secret military program.
The diplomat said Larijani's threat to cold-shoulder the IAEA suggested Iran might quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has refused since February to answer questions about or grant visits to sites where undeclared activity is suspected.
"We don't know what they mean. But relations are already down to the minimum. It's just basic safeguards," the diplomat said, referring to IAEA access to declared nuclear sites.
"The only meaningful thing they could do now is kick out inspectors and withdraw from the NPT, as North Korea did."
Schulte said Iran was stonewalling IAEA queries about P-2 centrifuges, designs for which it received from a nuclear black market run by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disclosed this month Iran was "presently conducting research" on P-2s, which can enrich uranium faster than the P-1 model the Iranians now operate.
Schulte said Ahmadinejad's comments had fueled suspicions Iran may have hidden P-2 activities from the IAEA.
Iran has rejected demands to restore confidence in its nuclear intentions by indefinitely halting enrichment.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said there should be no talk of unilateral military action.
China urged restraint and a peaceful solution, in comments echoed by visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, but British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iran should not take those countries' opposition to sanctions for granted.
"The Iranians, in my judgment, would miscalculate if they believed that Russia or China would block appropriate and effective sanctions, which targeted the regime, not the ordinary population," he told parliament in London.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in Berlin, Mark Heinrich in Vienna, Jon Boyle in Paris, Madeline Chambers and Katherine Baldwin in London, Chris Buckley in Beijing and Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran)
No sanctions. No resolutions.
...the plot thickens.
He has let his hunger for cheap honor (unearned, as is the custom in islam) write a check that he will have to cover with his microwaved chicken-fried fanny.
...more recent and relevant news.
China blocks proposed Iran resolution
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1621433/posts
Probably was part of the deal made between Russia, China and Iran. Russia and China will set Iran up as THE middle eastern power (military buildup plus nuclear) only if Iran causes problems for the US and Israel. Obviously the Russians and Chinese want to have control over Middle Eastern Oil.
U.S. firepower is an awesome thing. Once unleashed, it is difficult to put it back in its cage.
And if I get pulled over for speeding one more time, I'm just going to ignore the speed limit.
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